A Christmas gift from 1943 still vexes

Dec. 24, 2013

Updated Dec. 26, 2013 8:42 a.m.

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Allen Mitchell, 86, left, and Bonnie Mitchell, 85, of Fountain Valley met when they were 12 and 11 years old, respectively. Allen presented Bonnie with an engagement ring 70 years ago as they stood by a Christmas tree when they were 16 and 15. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Bonnie Mitchell, 85, left, and Allen Mitchell, 86, of Fountain Valley, met when she as 11 and he was 12. Allen presented Bonnie with an engagement ring by a Christmas tree 70 years ago. They were teenagers then, 15 and 16. They've been married 66 years. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Allen Mitchell, 86, and Bonnie Mitchell, 85, wear their wedding rings. Bonnie lost the engagement ring that Allen sold his motorcycle for 70 years ago. Allen presented the ring to her as they stood by a Christmas tree in her home on Dec. 15, 1943. They have been married 66 years. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A family photo shows Bonnie and Allen Mitchell walking out of church 66 years ago, right after getting married outside Houston, Texas. The Fountain Valley couple met when they were 12 and 11 years old. COURTESY OF THE MITCHELLS

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Family photos show Allen Mitchell, left, and Bonnie Mitchell of Fountain Valley before they married 66 years ago. Allen served in the Navy during World War II, while Bonnie trained to be a nurse. COURTESY OF THE MITCHELLS

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Allen Mitchell, 86, left, and Bonnie Mitchell, 85, of Fountain Valley still have a lot of fun together after 66 years of marriage. They met when Allen was 12 and Bonnie was 11. ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Allen Mitchell, 86, left, and Bonnie Mitchell, 85, of Fountain Valley met when they were 12 and 11 years old, respectively. Allen presented Bonnie with an engagement ring 70 years ago as they stood by a Christmas tree when they were 16 and 15.ANA VENEGAS, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

In January of 1940, the biggest winter storm in half a century hit Houston, Texas, dusting the streets with three inches of snow.

It wasn’t much, as snowfall goes, but without it Bonnie White might never have taken such notice of Allen Mitchell.

He showed up on her porch that morning with Norma Lee Flake, a playmate of Bonnie’s who lived around the block in her neighborhood.

Bonnie had to lower her gaze to get a good look at Allen. Even though he was 12 and she was 11, the top of his head barely reached her chin.

Too short, Bonnie thought.

Allen lived next door to Norma Lee, but Bonnie couldn’t recall ever seeing him before. They weren’t in school together. Allen walked three miles to get to his classes, while Bonnie rode a bus to the rival school.

Anyway, the pair of them, Norma Lee and Allen, came to see if Bonnie wanted to play hooky for the day and throw snowballs.

That idea didn’t go over with Bonnie’s mother, a beautician by training who took whatever work she could find, including cooking for a local lumber camp.

“No, way,” she told Bonnie. “You’re going to school.”

Bonnie didn’t find out until years later what Allen first thought of her, which was “not much.”

As time passed, they would change their minds.

• • •

Allen grew taller and Bonnie began to notice. She’d see him once in awhile when she roller skated or rode bikes with friends. She even took to riding past his house as often as she could, just to catch sight of him.

But Allen had eyes for other girls. It made Bonnie fuss that time he grabbed Patty Lou Earhart’s hand while they sat on Patty Lou’s front steps with a bunch of other kids watching a refinery fire light up the night sky.

At 15, Allen was going steady with one of Bonnie’s schoolmates. He and the girl ended up on a double date with Bonnie and another fellow who lived on his street.

The next weekend, Allen asked Bonnie to the movies. That was a big deal. Money was hard to come by.

Allen’s mom and stepdad worked long hours at the local grocery store and his stepdad was already asking him to pay room and board. So Allen got little jobs here and there.

Tickets for the movie cost 5 cents apiece.

After their first date, Allen and Bonnie only went out with each other.

• • •

For fun, Allen took Bonnie riding on the little two-stroke motorcycle that got him to school and work.

They’d go swimming at Tank Lake or squirrel hunting in the woods.

The motorbike helped Allen land a summer job at a shipyard, where World War II production was booming. He had haunted the place, asking for work, and told them he was almost 17 when they asked his age. The man in charge laughed at Allen’s actual birth date; he had barely turned 16. But they hired him anyway.

With the war still being fought as he finished high school, Allen knew he’d be drafted soon.

For Christmas of 1943 he wanted to give Bonnie a special gift. A friend who was a jeweler helped him buy it at wholesale price.

Allen couldn’t wait to give Bonnie the present.

Christmas was still 10 days away when Allen stood alone with Bonnie in the dining room of her home. The tree in front of the big window in the room glittered with its simple decorations of tinsel and bulbs.

Bonnie stared at the ring that Allen took from his pocket. He didn’t kneel down or anything like that.

A small diamond sat in the center of two orange blossoms shaped from pink gold, two smaller diamonds to either side.

When he got out of the service, he planned to get her the wedding band that would curve around the engagement ring.

But first, Bonnie had to say yes. She was all of 15.

“I don’t know if I love you,” she told Allen.

“Well, you do,” he said as he slipped the ring on her finger.

It was the most gorgeous ring she’d ever seen. She vowed to never take it off.

• • •

Allen had already joined the Navy but was allowed to graduate high school in 1944 before he was sent to San Diego for training, then on to Seattle where he boarded a ship that took him to Guam.

He was 17.

Back in Houston, Bonnie took college courses early. At 16, she got permission to join the U.S. Army Nurse Corps. It was the only way she could afford nursing school.

Allen sent most of his $22-a-month military pay home to Bonnie, who put it in the bank. She also socked away most of her monthly $15 check. Five dollars of it went to pay the installment on Allen’s wedding ring, a $35 ArtCarved gold band she put on layaway.

They wrote each other every couple of weeks. Allen folded his letters to Bonnie in a tight triangle, the way a military manfolds an American flag. Mostly, they wrote about how much they missed each other.

During that last year when he was away, Bonnie hid something from Allen.

She was doing her nurse’s training at Hermann Hospital in Houston, where it was against the rules to wear jewelry while working. Bonnie couldn’t bear to part with her engagement ring. So she slipped it off only when her supervisor came around.

One day, while diapering a baby on the children’s ward, Bonnie heard her supervisor coming down the hall. She tucked the ring in a pocket under the bib of her nurse’s apron.

Her supervisor spoke with Bonnie for maybe five minutes. How are things going? How are the patients?

As soon as she was alone again, Bonnie reached into her pocket.

No ring.

“It’s got to be somewhere,” she thought.

She searched through her uniform. She looked in the baby’s bed, then on the floor; in the beds of the babies, in the diaper – all over the room.

She ran down three floors to the basement where dirty linens landed out of a chute, and combed through the soiled laundry. She asked the laundry workers to keep an eye out. She asked the other nurses in her dorm to do the same.

But when he came home to Houston in the spring of 1947, he went straight to her dorm to see her, and Bonnie could hold back no longer.

She cried on his shoulder as she told him, not knowing how he would take it.

All he said was, “I’ll get you another one.”

But Allen never did, because Bonnie never wanted another engagement ring.

She just wanted to get married. And, six months later, they did. He was 20 and she was 19.

Allen slipped a wedding ring on Bonnie’s finger inside the chapel at First Methodist Church in Liberty, Texas, on Aug. 9, 1947.

It was 109 degrees. He soaked through his gray suit and sweat ruined her gray satin dress. Bonnie didn’t care.

“He was mine!” was all she could think or say.

“He was mine!”

• • •

Allen ended up working for Exxon. He spent 44½ years in oil fields and refineries around the world. Bonnie quit work to stay home and raise their two children when they came along in the early 1950s.

They are 86 and 85 now, and live in the same home they bought in Fountain Valley in 1964, when Allen’s bosses sent him from Texas to California. They have two grandchildren. Their first great-grandchild was born on Dec. 5.

The gold band Bonnie put on layaway for Allen is worn smooth, but he still wears it.

Bonnie’s wedding ring is a tight fit these days past knuckles swollen with age and arthritis. Instead, she wears the ring with five diamonds that Allen got her for their 25th anniversary. He also bought her a ring with a 3-carat diamond for their 50th anniversary.

All her rings are beautiful. But not as gorgeous as the ring Allen gave her that one Christmas.

Bonnie still hopes it might turn up somehow, somewhere. She finds herself staring at the fingers of women she passes by whenever she’s visiting Houston.

That ring will always be special because Allen gave it to her when he asked her to be his wife.

He had to lose something too in order to buy it.

Allen sold his motorcycle for $90, just enough to cover the $85 and change he paid the jeweler.

For the rest of his last year in high school, he pedaled a bicycle. He caught the bus at night to his job pumping gas at Fred Hester’s Conoco station 15 miles away. Fred dropped him off back home around midnight when the station closed.

The ring Allen gave Bonnie on Dec. 15, 1943, can never be replaced.

But the love etched in pretty orange blossoms has stayed with them through 66 years of marriage.

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